Coley’s Sun Gold Tomato Pasta

I think that’s why I met my friend Coley. We were both in New Orleans, eating and drinking, two bloggers who love to cook and travel and grow as many fruits and vegetables as possible in our backyards. We live a thousand miles apart, but the little islands we call home are very similar. And the way I feel about mangos is the same way she feels about tomatoes, which is completely obsessed. We don’t have to hide our nerdy fruit and vegetable enthusiasm from each other. It’s cool.She loves Sun Gold tomatoes, which I’d never heard of before I met her. I knew if this gardener from New Jersey loves them they must be special. She sent some in the mail a few years ago. When I opened the box it filled my kitchen with the smell of crushed tomato leaves. God I love that smell. I ate one and I was instantly sold, yet possibly ruined for all other tomatoes. It was the sweetest tomato I’d ever tasted, but there was so also that complex, super “tomatoey” flavor you only get from homegrown.Growing tomatoes in Florida is tricky. They get infested and diseased and they split, or they finally ripen up and then something else eats them. Enter my friend Leslie, another friend from my same flock, who manages to grow them in her Tampa garden despite all those challenges. She has a grid of Earthboxes in her backyard (along with some choice mango trees) and each box is overflowing with pristine veggies. Earthboxes are containers filled with rich soil and organic fertilizer. You fill a reservoir with water and it’s wicked up into the roots from the bottom, rather than drenching the soil on top. Once you plant them, you put a cover on top and it stays in place all season. No weeding. After exchanging seeds and tasting the early tomatoes from her garden, I decided to break out the Earthboxes I’d put away years ago. From here on out, it’s Sun Golds in Earthboxes for me. I still get some bugs and whatnot, but the blooms and sweet tomatoes just keep on coming. They’re growing so tall we added a trellis connected to the eaves of our house, and now I have to get out a step stool to pick them.So thanks to my friends Coley and Leslie for showing me the way!Here’s Coley’s recipe that I’ve been making every week. It’s just a few simple ingredients and it comes together in the time it takes you to cook the pasta, but Sun Golds are the shining stars.

Looks great. Did you start from seed or were you able to find Sun Gold seedlings somewhere? Both tomatoes and mangos are worthy objects of desire since the gap between home grown and store bought is so huge.

How very true, Lynne. I can’t think of two better examples of the dramatic difference in taste between store-bought and homegrown.
Last year I grew some from seed. Only one made it. It struggled along all winter, but finally produced well in late spring. This year I found very small seedling plugs at the Earthbox Research Center in Ellenton. I bought 5, but only 2 are in the Earthboxes. They’re doing so much better. One of these days we’d love to build a hydroponic system like you have!